The Splendor Of Silence Read Online Free

the little pink rectangle of cardboard between the tips of his fingers, and Sam saw the name MOHAMMAD ABDULLAH stamped on it, along with FIRST CLASS, BOGIE 4.
    It would have been quite all right if the matter had stopped there. "I'm sure," Mrs. Stanton said, the pale yellow feather in her purple hat quivering with the movement of her head, "this gentleman has been issued the right ticket. But this is not his place. Surely you realize that?" "You are welcome to sit beside me, madam," Mr. Abdullah said. "But I have bought, and paid, for this ticket. There is no possibility of a mistake here." He echoed Mrs. Stanton's words, but his voice was so bland, his expression so unmarked that Sam saw the underlying sarcasm only in a little smile that touched his lips within his neat, graying beard.
    Mrs. Stanton seemed to grow until she filled the doorway with her obstinate presence. And when she spoke, she did not look at the man, but at the conductor. "I cannot be asked to sit in the same compartment as this man. There must be another seat in this bogie."
    Her words roused a flurry of worry in the poor conductor, who mopped his brow, and cleared his throat even more. Sam, still seated near the window, had not said a word. He had merely watched the three of them, frozen in a tableau of stubbornness--Mr. Abdullah, unyielding to all influence; Mrs. Stanton, equally shut from everything, but simmering in anger, her breathing harsh; and the conductor, sighing and repeatedly patting the pocket where his handkerchief reposed. The conductor had taken Mr. Abdullah out into the corridor and Sam heard him talking, entreating, pleading. At first, his voice was persuasive, and then raised and threatening, but Mr. Abdullah's voice was always tranquil in response. "This is my seat," he had said. "She is welcome to go elsewhere." The train had waited, because Mrs. Stanton insisted that it would not leave Palampore until Mr. Abdullah left her compartment.
    The tags on Mrs. Stanton's bags read CALCUTTA-PALAMPORERUDRAKOT. On the Calcutta to Palampore train, Mrs. Stanton had sat uncomplaining with Mr. Abdullah. But there she was unknown, just anybody. On the Rudrakot train, she was someone of consequence. She knew the conductor well; he got his little packet of Christmas biscuits and an envelope of rupees from her as baksheesh. He was under her patronage. She could hold up the train if she so wanted. This was her train--the train of those like her who owned and ran Rudrakot.
    Sam leaned forward to rest his elbows on his thighs and stared fixedly at the floor of the compartment. A little crowd of coolies had grown outside on the platform, along with some pointing of fingers and some asking of questions in Hindustani and Urdu, and Sam could understand only bits of that. What a bloody memsahib she was, he thought. The memsahib of the British Raj, so typical, so true to what she had to be--imperious, disdainful, blind to any color of skin but hers, fearful even behind that mask of rudeness. He also experienced a well of irritation at Mr. Abdullah, with his quiet voice, his gentle insistence, his expectation of such behavior. Sam would have wrung Mrs. Stanton's skinny neck by now. His shoulder throbbed.
    Mr. Abdullah and Mrs. Stanton had fallen silent, each inflexible, until the train blasted its horn and pulled out of the station after thirty minutes. All the immense built-up drama deflated into futility, because Mrs. Stanton's influence over the night train to Rudrakot from Palampore could bear the weight of only half an hour. For anything beyond that, she would have to be someone and something greater in the British Raj.
    She sat then, finally, her bags and hatboxes littered under the bunks, her knitting by her side, and the train moved into its measure without a word spoken in the carriage. And this was Sam's introduction to the India he had not yet seen for himself because, though he had been in the subcontinent since February, all his time thus far had